Monday, December 31, 2012

I’m pretty
well back up to speed by now – although “speed” doesn’t imply anything very
brisk, these days. My husband is still very weak, although making progress. We
are living on Jewish penicillin.

We had Christmas
Eve.

We had
Boxing Day.

But nothing
in between.

My husband
was taken ill in the early hours of Christmas Day. We cancelled Mass-going
right away – it would have meant leaving him alone in the house for nearly two
hours, by the time we got to Inverary and back..

James and
his family were sleeping a mile or so away, in the former butler’s quarters of
the Big House, now converted into a pleasant self-catering flat. We soon
learned that James had been sick all night, so we cancelled Christmas Dinner.
His daughter Kirsty joined him on the casualty list a few hours later.

So we who
were still walking had a lovely, leisurely day, lunching on delicious left-over
lasagne. It couldn’t have been planned. I can’t remember why we cancelled
champagne and present-giving as the dark drew in. I was disappointed about
that.

Boxing Day
started well (see above). I was stricken in the late afternoon. The Little Boys
joined me during the night. The next day – it’s Thursday, by now -- James drove
us back to Edinburgh
in the huge people-carrier he had hired. James was fine by then. My husband and
I found it tough going, but it was good to be back in our own bed. James’ daughter Rachel fell to the dread
lurgy on Friday.

Before we
left Loch Fyne, however, on Thursday morning, Alexander trumped us all. He
hadn’t been feeling entirely well throughout. He felt tingly, he said. Now he
had developed a painful rash, self-diagnosed as shingles. A doctor confirmed
the guess that afternoon. He’s taking anti-viral drugs and pain-killers. But it
means weeks of pain, at the very least.

Big-Rachel’s
family from London
replaced us on the shores of Loch Fyne. When I last heard, one of them had gone
down and another wasn’t feeling very well.

But they
are safely back in London now, and the Beijing
Mileses are back in Beijing
(and didn’t get sick during the journey). And, as Alexander said the last time
I spoke to him, it only happens once a year.

Monday, December 17, 2012

I’m not getting anywhere with this.

Anonymous, I do want most emphatically to say that my quarrel
is not with single parents, but with absent fathers. This one seems to have
been a bog-standard, middle-class middle-life
divorce-after-28-years-of-marriage. I’m not greatly impressed with the father’s
statement: “Our family is grieving along with all those who have been affected
by this enormous tragedy.”

Which family is that, then?

Libby Purves wrote in the Times in 1997:

“The literature of parenthood deals overwhelmingly with the
first few years, with bracingly simple issues like broken nights and ear
infections and daycare. Perhaps it is as well for the species that nobody ever
really expects 18 years of supervision and a lifetime of worry. I was fussing
over a baby in a carrycot at a BBC seminar once when Bill Cotton, well retired
by then, thundered: ‘You think it’s tough now. Just you wait until he’s
fifty.’”

But when I stop to think about it, the majority of the
suicides I have known or known of – one is far too many – have been the sons of
stable marriages. Including the baby in the carrycot just mentioned – he didn’t
make it to 50.

So I’d better not go on pontificating.

I think, in fact, I’ll pause here for the solstice. I’m not doing at all well at trying to think
about knitting. We should be back from Loch Fyne for the weekend at the end of
the year.

A very happy solstice to all, however observed. And sympathy to cat and her friends, who are
about to find their light diminishing.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

A day
further forward.

Christmas
is coming along nicely. Our little tree is up, the cards dispatched, the
pudding made (although not yet steamed), the hat knit. I have a couple of days
in hand to re-group and try to advance the non-seasonal aspects of life – clean
clothes, accounts, that sort of thing.

Except that
Newtown has
drained all the savour from this.

Is gun
control possible? Would gun control help?

I’ll go get
the Sunday paper in a moment and read all about it. One detail on which I feel
completely confident without waiting to be told, is that the killer’s father
wasn’t a member of his household.

Each
morning’s blog is pretty much a distillation of thots entertained during the
previous day. And so today there is nothing else.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Desperate,
terrible sadness.

In a few
minutes now, Alexander will set forth into the semi-dark, to walk to the school
bus stop with his beloved Little Boys. He will be reluctant to let them go.

Amy Kaspar
has written something for the Examiner about knitting for Newtown. (I can’t find it on the Examiner
website, to give you the link. I read it on Zite.) My first thought was
derisive. Knitting? But it’s a sensible article, about prayer shawls and
stuffed toys. If I were in America
this morning, there are few places I’d rather be than in a seat at the table in
my LYS.

We have
seen this particular pattern before, including at Dunblane. Augmented suicide.
There has been at least one previous instance where the killer began by
killing his mother. I don’t trust myself to write about this. The hellish
unhappiness of that young man. The dangers for all young men of the white-water
years of adolescence.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Archie is
in Athens, and
today I’ll get back to work on Christmas. Maybe even make the pudding. Cards
are nearly finished – there are always a few stragglers. People we didn’t hear
from last year, probably because they are dead or demented, but deserving of
one more try.

(I rang up
one such friend the other day. Not dead at all, just 85 and very arthritic.
She’s given up sending cards. We’re going to Do Lunch in January.)

Archie
seemed in fine fettle. He told me on the way to the airport that, early in his Merchiston
career, he was required to run a mile and couldn’t do it. He broke down in
tears half-way through, he said. This week, he ran two miles.

I told my
husband when I got home and he harrumphed that that was what you would expect
of any good boarding school. I think he misses the point. Prince Charles went
to a sporty, outdoors-y Scottish boarding school and no doubt did lots of
running. He was notoriously miserable and his own sons weren’t allowed anywhere
near the place. It is obvious that Archie isn’t miserable.

I told
Helen about this when she rang at the end of the afternoon to say that he was
safely home. She knew about the earlier episode, not about the two-mile run.
There was no harrumphing in Athens.

The needles
turned up yesterday at last – so much for first-class post at Christmas time –
and I resumed the Sixteen-Cable
Hat (Ravelry link). It’s looking good. There are only four cable rounds
altogether – or five, if you add some optional extra rounds to make the hat
slouchier. I don’t know whether I’ll have yarn enough for that. But the cables
are eight over eight, so the cable rounds themselves and the immediately
following rounds are pretty slow.

Still, it
won’t take long. I did two of those four cable rounds yesterday.

Comments

Tricia, I
thought of magic-looping when the needle problem first presented itself. I
watched a video and decided this Wasn’t For Me. Maybe I’ll come back to it.
Thank you for the link.

Needle
sizes: Yours is an interesting tale, Sarah JS. So the old British sizes didn’t
go out with pounds, shillings and pence as I thought. There was a rule – I
don’t need to get it right since the British numbers are no more – that if, for
any given needle size, you added the British and American numbers together, the
answer would always be 14. Or maybe it was 16. So there's an overlap in the middle (obviously, there would be) at size 7 or 8, where the numbers were the same.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

I
calculated, and re-calculated, and finished casting on, and have now knit
myself somewhere into the second inch of ribbing on Ed’s Gardening Sweater –
and isn’t it bliss not to have to count rounds? because back and front are
being knit together in a tube; and not to have to measure and worry about
whether I’ve done enough ribbing, because I’m the boss and can stop whenever I
think I’ve done enough?

The
experience is fully as wonderful as I anticipated, and this is only the
ribbing, which I don’t much like doing. I should be well enough along by the
time I see the recipient on Boxing Day that some judgement can be made about
size and suitability. I feel I don’t care – I wouldn’t mind ripping out and
starting again forever, with this wonderful yarn, like Penelope at her loom.

Perhaps
2013 will be the Year of madelinetosh. If I decide to abandon the Japanese
shirt, I could order some more tosh sock yarn (oh dear, naughty) and do a
finely striped tee. I need to talk to possible female recipients about what they
might actually like. Rachel, Ketki, Cathy, Hellie and Lizzie will all be on the
shores of Loch Fyne soon, and so will I. Knitting for men is easier. Simple
shapes. The idea is to keep warm. It’s no use endlessly knitting for myself and
then not wearing the result: what would women wear?

I took my
husband to a podiatry appt yesterday and sat knitting the current sock while waiting for him. I
sat next to a woman who admired what I was doing – “Those are very fine
needles. Twelves or thirteens?” She was referring to the old British sizes (the
opposite of American sizes, where big numbers mean big needles). They went out
when the currency was decimalised in the late 60’s, I would say. Since then we
have used millimetres.

She said
her family was tired of being knitted for, so she knits for a charity that
sends lorry-loads of sweaters to East European children. I told her about the
Dutch woman with 60 years of sweaters piled up in her house. She – my companion
in podiatry – doesn’t have a computer or a television, and listens to the radio
sparingly. She reads. Those smart men and women in suits who run the country
need to be reminded sometimes that not all of us care to keep up with them.

The new
needles for the last-minute hat didn’t turn up yesterday, despite having been
posted first class on Monday. Surely today?

To return
to earth: Thank you for the help both with long-tail cast-on’s and short
rows. You have persuaded me to use the
latter to lift the back neck, when I get there. At the moment – remember, I am
doing this bit by bit, with Meg’s four articles in Knitter’s 2000 – she is
suggesting them below the armpits, even perhaps in front to accommodate a
paunch. I don’t need that.

You have
also persuaded me to attempt the phoney seam described yesterday. Meg says that
you can drop the stitch when you get to the underarm, and persuade it to run
down, or “you may do [the seams] incrementally as you inch your way up the
body”. How would that work? Ladder back after a couple of inches, crochet up,
restore the stitch to the needle and knit on?

And I shall
retain and ponder your suggestions for calculating the long-tail. Someone said
something about this in Franklin’s
lace class. Do you remember, Shandy? I think it was your idea, BlueLoom. But I think next time I’ll
try using two balls of yarn tied together.

Today’s
excitement is that Archie will turn up under his own steam this afternoon or
evening, and I will drive him to the airport tomorrow and dispatch him towards Athenian warmth and sunlight. So if I’m not here tomorrow, that’s why.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Another
good day on the Christmas front – six or seven cards written, three presents
wrapped. I begin to feel like the old horse when its head is turned towards the
stable – a fortnight from today will be a little bit lighter than the day
before. And the day before will have been lighter than the day before that.
Unless the world ends on the solstice as the Mayans predict.

And I got
to the post office and dispatched a heavy package to Greece. Expensive, but not as
expensive as EasyJet excess baggage. And it’s done.

I tidied up
the brioche scarf – there was less to do than I thought.

And I
swatched for Ed’s Gardening Sweater. Goodness, this stuff is beautiful. I had a
moment almost of panic – what am I going to do when I finish the swatch? I
can’t knit the hat until those needles come. The scarves are finished. I can’t
just sit here.

The answer
would have been the perennial lurking sock, but I didn’t think of that. I just
went ahead and opened Knitter’s for Spring 2000 and got started on Meg’s
instructions for the EPS.

She wants a
circular swatch, or a flat one where you loop the yarn across the back and
start again at the other side, so as to knit every row. I didn’t do that. But
then she very engagingly says that, even after doing it right, she measured
4.25 stitches to the inch and in fact got a gauge of 4. Try it and you may, I
say, in the immortal words of Sam-I-am.

So I
measured and did the arithmetic and attempted to cast on 238 stitches. It’s
been a while since I did anything like that – I didn’t leave enough yarn in the
Long Tail, and had to start again. That
gave me time to reflect that if I want a 2x2 rib, it’ll have to be 236 or 240.
So that’s where I am at the moment – casting on.

This first
article gives the proportions for the body, and instructions for knitting up to
the underarm, and some suggested embellishments. I don’t think I’ll need short rows to avoid it riding up in the
back, as I’m knitting for a fit rectangular man. Phoney seams are an
interesting idea – drop a stitch at the underarm, run it back, and then crochet
up, alternately taking in two ladders and then one. I’ve never tried that.

She also
includes a brilliant arithmetical trick from Cheryl Brunette for spacing the
increases in the ribbing-to-body round. It’s from her Sweater 101 which is still out there.

I’ve knit
two other sweaters recently for Ogden
men: Thomas-the-Elder’s “Brownstone” is a bit too generous.

Joe’s Grandson
Sweater is just about perfect.

Hope for the best.

Change of
subject: Queer Joe remarks on
Facebook that he google’d “Knitting blogs” and found himself third and felt
terribly pleased. I tried it – I was 8th, I think, but Joe was 10th
on my list. Maybe Google knows. Then I tried “knitting blogs UK” and that
moved me down to the second page, 14th or so. Jared was top of the
first list, my neighbour Kate Davies of the second.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Another
good day on the Christmas front. Six cards written, three presents wrapped,
today’s strategies planned. We shall see.

Two years
ago I planned a big family Christmas in Strathardle. Savage weather made it
impossible, and in the end we spent the day here in Drummond Place with the Beijing Mileses
and a tree from Poundland. I think we spent as much again on decorations for
it. We loved it. My husband suggested yesterday that we set it up again. It’s a
brilliant idea, and we’ll do that.

On the
knitting front, I again left the Brioche scarf unfinished. I cast on for the
last-minute-present hat. I’ve got a lot more Cocoon than Vatican Pie left over from the two scarves, but Vatican Pie is much nearer the weight of yarn the hat
designer intends, so I’ve gone with that. I’m pretty sure there’s enough.

I thought I
had short circulars in every gauge known to man, left over from that Christmas
when I knit a hat for everyone on the list. But I don’t seem to have a short
5mm, and that’s what I need. I jumped at the chance to order a Knit Pro from Meadow Yarn – their service is
first-rate, it might even be here tomorrow. I’ve knit the brim, on a 4mm which
I did have to hand. The rest won’t take more than a couple of evenings.

Except that
Meadow Yarn is out of short Knit Pro 5mm’s. After a moment’s tremor, I went for 4.5.

And then I
wound a skein of madelinetosh sport yarn “Firewood” and cast on a swatch for
Ed’s Gardening Sweater. Bliss awaits.

Yarnologist,
I am deeply touched that you have nominated me for the Liebster Award,
although daunted at what I have to do. I am not sure I know eleven things about
myself. I waste too much time here,
that’s one.

I ordered a copy of Vogue’s “Ultimate Hat Book” the other day, in the midst of all my on-line Christmas shopping. It turned up
yesterday – have we ever before had a mail delivery on a Sunday? I haven’t
spent much time with it yet. It has a good analysis of the anatomy of hats and,
needless to say, some nice patterns.

Sunday, December 09, 2012

It’s been a
while since we had a picture. Here’s the finished Reversible Cable scarf – you’re
seeing both sides. The flash has brightened the colour, but you get the general
idea. Here’s the Ravelry
link to Mary Lou’s pattern. Recommended. The yarn, to recapitulate, is
Colinette’s “Art” yarn in her “Vatican Pie” colorway.

I should
polish off the Brioche scarf this evening – I’m about half-way through that
tidying job.

Speaking of
which, Nancy Marchant – she who wrote the book – is offering a Craftsy
class in brioche knitting. I’m seriously tempted. I’ve got the book, but
have never made any headway with it. Maybe video classes would work better?

I continued
to make progress with Christmas yesterday, apart from finishing the scarf. I
like doing cards, but could wish there were more hours in the day. I like
reading last year’s messages and thinking of old friends, many of whom we’ll
never see again. And writing at least a sentence or two for each. The object of
the game is to keep working steadily – not to get behind and have to rush it
and make the messages perfunctory.

I also got
a bit more wrapping done. I don’t think I’ve ever spaced that chore out before,
and it’s a good idea.

Here’s a
seasonal note to end on – Theo just sent this picture of his Christmas tree. We've got horizontality issues again -- at least by now I know better than to spend Sunday morning struggling with it in vain. That’s
Helen’s wedding present to Theo and his wife on the wall behind – “Our house ever fortunate with its own”. Must be a quotation.

And on the
tree you can see one of Arne and Carlos’ baubles, knit by me this time last
year.

Saturday, December 08, 2012

The
knitting of the Reversible Cables was successfully resumed – there’s only an
inch to go, so I should finish tonight, and maybe have time to tidy up the
Brioche Scarf as well. Reversible Cables is looking splendid, Brioche is less
than perfect which is a bit distressing. It’s a very difficult stitch to
repair.

And then,
perhaps…

I have
finished my Christmas shopping. One present seems slightly less than adequate.
(I might mention that I have never been disappointed with anything I ordered
on-line. This one is exactly as described, and is something I think the
recipient will like. It’s just that it looks a bit small-sized and mingy,
compared to what other grandchildren are getting.) So I might knit this
(Ravelry link) – that particular grandchild hasn’t had a hat since ’09.

I got on
pretty well with Christmas yesterday. If I can keep on writing six or seven
cards a day, I’ll have them done in a week. I started wrapping, a disliked job
even where wrapping-for-the-post is not involved. But the result, a pile of
glittery packages, is gratifying. I’ve done two.

I opened my
husband’s Microsoft Surface. This is going to be fun! The packaging is
impressive. The electrics – that’s what I was a bit concerned about – look
fine. The keyboard is pancake-thin, separate from the main object. I think it
will suit my husband better than a virtual keyboard, even one as good as the
iPad’s. There is no hint of an instruction book. I am of the generation who
used to enjoy reading computer manuals in the bath. But I am sure Alistair will
be equal to the challenge.

Non-knit

I have had
messages from people who were hurt by my remark that we had advised
granddaughter Lizzie not to apply to an East Coast college for her
junior-year-in-America. It shows how dangerous it can be to write hastily.

I love the
East Coast. If I should return to America
I couldn’t think of living anywhere but Boston
or Princeton. (No, that’s not true: Kendal in
Oberlin would be a possibility, or Seattle.)
But the East Coast seemed to all of us the most European-like part of the US, and we
thought Lizzie should experience something that many European visitors never
see. My sister lives in CT, at the mouth of the Connecticut
River. Her son Theo and his wife Jenni are in DC (and likely to
remain! since the election went the right way). Lizzie will surely visit them
in the vacations.

And she has
already visited them – each of my grandchildren has had a fortnight in the US at the age
of 11-12, a tradition started by my mother with my own children, and nobly
carried forward by my sister. And, of course, she was at Theo and Jenni’s
splendid wedding in CT three years ago. So she has had a bit of a taste of the
East Coast, and has at least seen the New
York skyline. But no taste of Kansas whatsoever – and I think she’s going
to like it.

Lizzie is the middle grandchild in the back row of the picture in my sidebar.

Friday, December 07, 2012

So now you
know where to come if you want help knitting a haggis! Many thanks to yesterday’s
commenters.

A slight
setback here yesterday – I was knitting peacefully along on the Reversible Cables and came to the end of
the current ball and went to get the final skein of Colinette’s “Vatican Pie” –
and couldn’t find it! Could I possibly, in fact, not have ordered it? Were there only three? After
quite a bit of looking, I gave up and ripped out a few rows in order to have
the yarn to finish off.

Then I
found it.

The
stitches have been recovered, I’ve figured out where I am in the pattern, I am
ready to resume (except that I have still to wind the skein). But the net
result is that I seem to have advanced only two inches yesterday – still six to
go.

Christmas

Some
progress yesterday – I made a good start on the cards. I have heard from
Alistair in Beijing
that he will be delighted to teach his grandfather how to use his Christmas-present Microsoft
Surface, and I’ve ordered a stylus for it. I was most encouraged, Catdownunder, to hear
how well your father, at 89, is getting on with his iPad.

I think I
read somewhere that the Surface automatically backs up to the cloud, and if
not, my husband can learn to use Dropbox. He has a healthy respect for the
routine of backing-up. Alistair says that they were burgled recently in Beijing – nobody told me –
and ‘[Daddy] was like: "Oh no my laptop!"
but then he was like "Ha Alistair! Sugarsync backed it all up! The cloud
isn't so useless after all"’

I had trouble with that blasted credit card again yesterday –
but this time it was probably because I typed a wrong digit. Payments to
other sources went through yesterday, and another one did this morning. I’ve
paid the one that failed from another account. Lots of paying, this time of
year.

If this business about the Mayan calendar proves right, the
world will end the day before we go to Loch Fyne. That will be a
disappointment.

Miscellany

There was an article in this week’s Sunday Times about the
new Canadian Governor of the Bank of England. It said that his “firebrand wife”
is “prone to frequent outbursts of anti-capitalism and yoghurt knitting
patterns”. That’s a new one. Neither yoghurt nor knitting was mentioned in the
rest of the article.

Rosesmama and Catmum, thank you for the pointer to the Turban(d) pattern
(Ravelry link) – I’ve downloaded and printed.

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Not much
was accomplished around here yesterday.

However,
the scarf now has but eight inches to go. A couple more evenings should do it.
Zite came up this morning with Lorna Watt’s Chunky
Turban Headband (Ravelry link). I’m not thinking Christmas-present. I’m
thinking leftover-yarn – from both scarves – and I’m also thinking
baby-it’s-cold-outside. The pattern wants super chunky and I don’t think either
yarn qualifies as that, but I also think adjustment would be within my
capacities.

So I bought
the pattern. Someone commented recently that she always prints out a pattern
right away, after downloading it: so do I. So that one is ready to roll.

I’ve also
been thinking about what sweaters to knit for the Little Boys on the shores of
Loch Fyne, if Scotland
win the Catcutta Cup next year. It’s good fantasy knitting, because Scotland won’t
win. Quite apart from the fact that we are rubbish at the moment, and England really rather good, the match is played
in London in
odd-numbered years. Scotland
never win there.

The 2012
celebratory sweaters (not needed, in the event) were going to be Norwegian. This
time, I’m thinking of carrying on from Ed’s Gardening Sweater and knitting
smaller EPS Seamless Saddle Shoulders (KWT) in beautiful madelinetosh.

QueerJoe in
his post for December 3 says without explanation that he has “started getting
regularly scheduled deliveries of madelinetosh yarns” – I want in on that one!
He illustrates a wonderful colorway called Bitterroot, not far off Firewood
with which I am soon to begin knitting.

I had the
same idea – that it would be worth my while to pay EasyJet to let Archie take
another suitcase. Helen’s husband David did the work, and reported that it
would cost £14 for a physical extra bag plus £69 for up to 9 kilos. That’s
booking-in-advance. So I’ll squeeze anything I can into his suitcase – and his
mother has told him to wear as many clothes as possible – and face up to
posting the rest.

Dawn, when
I was in China
I saw, like you, museum attendants knitting, and others with jobs that left
time on their hands. One day James took us out in the country to visit places
where bits of the Great Wall exist (as well as the famous site near Beijing where princes
go). In one village, there was a group
of women sitting on the pavement in the afternoon. One of them was knitting a
one-piece baby garment into which it looked as if a small child could usefully
be sewn in November. She didn’t want to be photographed, even when James asked
her politely in Mandarin.

The only
Chinese patterns I’ve seen are western spin-offs. But on the strength of that one
baby-gro I’d like Kirsty to probe more deeply. If people in the cities knit,
there could be a country tradition behind them.

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Christmas

You win
some: my husband’s present, a Microsoft Surface, arrived yesterday – one
potential major source of worry nipped in the bud. I haven’t dared open the
package yet, but must soon, if only to make sure that the electricals are right
for charging the battery from British electricity.

I’m
counting on James and Cathy’s son Alistair to teach my husband how to use it,
when we meet on the shores of Loch Fyne, and, especially, how to surf the
web. My husband is aware of the infinite resources of cyberspace but up until
now has only been able to tell me what he wants fetched from there.

And
Alistair can play with the Surface himself when we have gone to bed.

You lose
some: Helen writes from Athens
that Archie will be travelling EasyJet when he goes home for the holidays next
week. The baggage allowance is very limited – I won’t be able to fill a small
suitcase with presents and just hand it to him, after all. I think I’ll be able
to insinuate his brother Fergus’ present into whatever luggage he is taking.
It’s long and narrow, awkward to wrap for the post, and light-weight. For the
rest, it will have to be that expensive trudge to the post office after all.

Thank you
for the kind comments about Lizzie’s forthcoming adventures in Kansas. Considering that
there are only about 350 of us world-wide, on a very good day, it seems
remarkable that so many have connections to the University of Kansas.
Lizzie is, alas, not a knitter so almost certainly never looks at this blog: I
gathered up all the relevant comments and emailed them to her just now.

I know of
the Yarn Barn, of course. But I don’t think I have ever ordered from them, and
I didn’t know that that’s where they are.

(So far,
Alistair is the only one of my grandchildren who has shewn a real aptitude for
knitting – but his early interest was squashed by strict Chinese views on
gender roles. I still have hopes of his younger sister Kirsty. I need someone
to go into the Chinese countryside, speaking the language -- as Kirsty does --
and write the book about Chinese peasant knitting.)

As for
actual knitting, I left the brioche scarf unfinished and returned to the
Reversible Cables last night. It’s slower work, but progressing nicely. I could
stop any time. But I have determined on seven feet – 14 inches to go, therefore
– and will proceed with that plan.

I must
remember to allow time for making the Christmas pudding and perhaps cranberry
sauce. Not to mention writing those cards. How did I manage it all when I did
the whole thing myself, and had a job, and had to move the household from Birmingham to Strathardle
in the darkest days of December?

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

…and wasn’t
it Laura Linney with whom Frazier rode off into the sunset in the last reel?

We’ve had
rather a burst of good news around here.

nGranddaughter
Lizzie is reading American Studies at BirminghamUniversity.
Next year will be spent in the US,
and she heard yesterday that she has been assigned to her first choice – the University of Kansas. We all told her to get well away
from the East Coast. I sent her the lyrics to the Sunflower Song
but can’t seem to persuade the computer to sing it for her.

nHer
brother Joe, who graduated from Nottingham
last year, has got a job. He has been doing an internship with a company which
has something to do with sport promotion. Internship = toiling unpaid and
living on air: you don’t qualify for Jobseeker’s Allowance, since you’re not
seeking a job. They have offered him a real job, from January.

nJames
will be in London
any moment now, staying with Rachel – mother of the two people just mentioned
-- for a couple of weeks and working in the head office of the Economist.

nI succeeded in ordering Kate Davies’ book, and heard from Amazon that “Knit Your Own
Scotland” is on its way. Kristie
wrote to say she has had a similar message from Amazon. She wants to knit a
haggis for her cousin Kath – we all three had a very happy lunch at a pub in
the Grassmarket last year. We didn’t have haggis, though.

I got
through all of yesterday’s chores all right. I spent £49.17 at the post office,
sending one package and a dozen cards airmail to the US, and buying stamps for
the domestic cards, as yet unwritten. That’s a lot of money.

And in the
afternoon, we got to the Eye Pavillion and back. My husband agreed to go by
taxi – a definite milestone on the downward path. We owe all our prosperity in
old age to a lifetime of never taking taxis. We managed the return journey by
bus. (We've got a perfectly good car, but there would have been nowhere to park.)

And I’ve
cast off the brioche scarf. Tonight I’ll tidy up the ends, and pick up the
Reversible Cables.

Shandy has
a good note in her latest blog entry about knitting at Christmas time, the
craziness of panicking about it. I can’t imagine anything much sillier than
getting stressed over one’s knitting instead of letting it soothe and comfort.
Kaffe mentioned in his talk last week how knitting calms and sustains him. And
I have a little theory that knitting round-and-round is even more comforting
than back-and-forth. Although Kaffe won’t have much experience of that.

That’s part
of what I’m looking forward to with Ed’s Gardening Sweater – not just the
beautiful madelinetosh yarn, and the pleasure of knitting from EZ’s and Meg’s
pages again, but the joy of going round and round.

Monday, December 03, 2012

There has
been a great leap forward in the number of Followers since Franklin’s recommendation. I fear I will fail
your expectations, but you are all most welcome.

Today is my
sister’s 76th birthday. She’s catching up with me fast. Happy
Birthday, Helen. Our mother always said it was her best Christmas ever – she
had to get everything done well in advance, and she did. A healthy baby under the Christmas tree was a
welcome plus.

Romulus Linney: I didn’t know it was lung
cancer, Shandy.
I did know, Beverly and Catmum, that Laura is his daughter. “The Truman Show”
is one of my favourite movies.

I think we
overlapped at Oberlin only by a year, Rommy Linney and I – he was a towering
figure when I was a freshman. He was on stage at a welcome session in my first
few days. He told us, at one point, to turn around and shake hands with the
person behind us. We all tried to do it, and then all laughed. I think of that
moment often, in relation to Christmas. It’s fun giving people things, and
imagining in advance how their faces will light up when they unwrap our present
and discover the very thing they wanted. Less easy to bear in mind that one
will, oneself, be on the other end of such exchanges and that one’s own reaction
will be equally necessary to the jollity of the moment.

Knitting:
the brioche scarf has about five inches to go. This evening might polish it
off.

Kate
Davies’ book went on sale at 8 a.m. this morning. Now, at 9:10, she says
she’s sold out!

Christmas:
once when my mother was moving house, she grumbled to a neighbour over the
garden fence about all she had to do. Start with the job that bugs you most, he
said. It was good advice. So yesterday I wrapped my sister’s present, as well
as polishing off the rest of the USA-bound Christmas cards. Will I get to a
post office with them today? The local one closed some years ago. I think they explained at the time that they were doing it for my greater convenience. Or will I be required to devote all available time and
energy to getting my husband to a routine diabetic retinopathy examination at
the Eye Pavillion this afternoon?

Sunday, December 02, 2012

You were
quite right, Kristie – getting started on the Christmas cards was all it took
to make me feel happier. A bit happier. Chores are like that old computer game
with moles – hit one on the head, and there are two more behind you.

One nice
thing is that there has never in history been a year with so few packages to
wrap and post – a chore I truly hate, and an expensive one. Archie will save me a great deal of trouble
and money by carrying the Greek presents to Athens when he goes home for the hols – gosh,
next week. I’ll see everybody else on the shores of Loch Fyne. That leaves only
the present for my sister to entrust to the mails.

The credit card worked fine yesterday. There are now only a couple more jobs for it to do.

The
still-to-do part of the brioche scarf is now measured in inches rather than
feet. Two more evenings? It doesn’t look as if there’s any danger of a knitting
panic, anyway. And the prospect of starting Ed’s Gardening Sweater stretches
ahead like a sunny pasture. I’ll take it along over Christmas.

Franklin has posted about Loop. Wonderful pictures, including one of me. That
should boost readership into the stratosphere for a day or two. And if I ever
get to London again, I am going to have to
insist on a day to myself to go back to Loop.

But how’s
this for seasonal gloom:

I opened up
Zite on the iPad just now, to see if there was any knitting news to fill a
paragraph. The opening page always consists of five items on any subject which
Zite thinks might be of interest. One of
them, today, is a poem called Wild
Before Winter, written by someone I knew at Oberlin. (Either that or there
are two men in the world named Romulus Linney.)

“In my
eightieth year” it says in the poem. Just like me. And at the end it says,
“Used by permission of the Estate of Romulus Linney”.

On a
brighter note: I was overjoyed, as you guessed, Metropolitan Rebecca, to learn
that the norovirus is named after Norwalk,
Ohio. Wikipedia confirms it. The
virus laid the mighty All Blacks low last week, to the point where England beat
them yesterday.

Saturday, December 01, 2012

Today,
panic and gloom. I still haven’t started the Christmas cards. I can’t find the
piece of paper on which I’ve written my passwords. It’s December. There are
only three weeks to go. (Alexander is planning to come and get us on Saturday
the 22nd.)

I ordered a
Microsoft Surface for my husband’s Christmas yesterday. The credit card company
phoned from New York
within the hour, asking if I really wanted to spend that much on the silly old
fool. I am grateful to them for looking out for me, but apprehensive about what
will happen when I try to use the card today.

This annual
misery is all very well. Three-weeks-until-Christmas-HELP really means
three-weeks-until-the-solstice-HURRAY. I worry – I’ve said this before – about Catdownunder and her
friends, who are being hustled through the best weeks of the year.

Odds and
ends

Schaefer yarns are about to disappear.
Cheryl apparently is going to retire, without selling the business on.

Packages
are arriving by every post – the great thing about shopping on-line is that it
feels as if I get a present every day. But “Knit Your Own Scotland” isn’t here
yet. I look upon that sort of knitting as utterly fiddly and not-me. But on the
other hand, the few times I’ve tried it – I think Sam-the-Ram would count, and
Arne and Carlos’ Christmas tree ornaments certainly do – I’ve enjoyed it. So I
am at least open to the possibility of knitting Scotland.

The program
for next year’s Games is out already, and the knitting categories are dreadful.
“Fish and chip baby suit (Pattern supplied: to be donated)” and “Cushion cover
(no pad)”. A recipe is supplied every year for one of the baking categories –
it’s a “smiddy loaf” this year – so that the playing field is completely level.
I suppose it’s an interesting thought, to apply the same idea to knitting.

Unfortunately,
the pattern isn’t supplied, at least not yet. I would do very badly, I’m sure.

The new VK
turned up yesterday – I didn’t even know I was expecting one. There’s nothing
there I want to knit, but the magazine is exciting.

Kaffe had
some interesting things to say on Thursday. Avoid white and bright yellow when
you’re mixing colours – darker is better. He regards the colour wheel as the
work of the devil. He doesn’t (I gather) knit socks himself, but it sounds as
if the sock yarns he has designed for Regia have been a nice little earner for
him. He doesn’t like most hand-dyed yarns. They look stunning in the skein, but
when you get them home and knit them, they look like cat’s vomit. I think that
was his analogy.

He showed
us a scarf knit with two space-dyed yarns in which the colours change slowly –
just knit eight-row stripes of each yarn alternately, and let them change as
they will. I think I’ve seen that idea somewhere before. The result was very
nice. Maybe that’s next year’s Christmas scarf?

Friday, November 30, 2012

I had a
grand time at Kaffe’s talk yesterday (didn’t buy the book, though). There was a
big turnout despite the £10 charge for what amounted to a book-signing with
extra talk. He is nearly as old as I am, and beginning to look it.

I met Sir
Steven Runciman once, another supremely handsome man and one whose History of
the Crusades and Sicilian Vespers I had read all the way through, in my more
mentally active years. The line that sprang to mind when I saw him was, Bare
ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

(The same,
of course, could be said of me except that I was never much to gladden the eye
in youth, so the loss is considerably less.)

Kaffe is
fading, but, like Runciman, remains as fit and sharp and entertaining as
ever. He took us through the familiar story, Bill Gibbs, learning to knit on
train. I hadn’t known, though, that he went to work for Missoni after that
famous first effort was published in VK. (I was much struck with it myself, at
the time, and remembered his name.) He made a funny story of the visit of two
supremely elegant Missonis to his cold-water flat. He had to begin by learning
the colour words in Italian.

It was good
to see Helen C.K.S.
too. We have been promising each other lunch for a long time now – “After the
Festival”, “When this trying holiday season is over”. The year seems to contain
little else. We’re aiming for January.

Miscellaneous
more

-- A friend of
Shandy’s sent me a link to this website
in which are offered natural-coloured sheep-specific wools. Oh! for another
lifetime, to knit it all. As far as I can remember, the only sheep-specific
yarns I have actually knit were Shetland and Wensleydale. The
latter was acquired at one of those workshop-and-talk days somewhere, and it
was heaven to knit. I made a sweater with broad stripes for Helen’s husband
David when he was new to the family.

Wensleydale
are those sheep with dreadlocks.

-- Franklin is home, and
posting about his English adventure. You don’t need me to tell you that. (All I
had to do was type www.t and Google Chrome knew
where I wanted to go.)

And as for
actual knitting, I’m getting on fine. See sidebar. The brioche scarf, which I
took to Strathardle earlier in the week, doesn’t entirely please. The colour
seems sort of dull, and the knitting is not flawless partly because I am
terrified even to attempt ripping back.

Barring
disaster, I’ll finish both scarves with time to spare for a hat. But none of
the few blanks on my Christmas list will want a hat,or if they do, they had one last year, so the plan is to go
straight on to Ed’s Gardening Sweater.

Christmas
shopping is nearly done – all on-line or by telephone except for the knitting.
One of those articles in the paper the other day by a smart 30-year-old suggested
giving fewer presents. They just embarrass people. But what if you have four
children and four sons- and daughters-in law and twelve living grandchildren.
Where do you prune the list?

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Safely back – and we had a good time, saw to a few little
things that needed seeing to, enjoyed good weather. The horrors of darkness and
Christmas press hard, this morning.

Have you heard of Loes
Veemstra? I found her on Zite. A Dutchwoman who has been knitting sweaters
since 1955, hundreds of them by now, and stowing them away unused. Now for some
reason they have emerged into the light. The link is to a video – not YouTube,
however – showing a street party with the sweaters in use and Veemstra on a
throne amidst them.

Lots of intarsia. No evidence of moths. Bizarre.

The video plays only shakily on my tired old computer. While
I was waiting I pondered on the fact that “knitting” seems to be “breiwerk” in
Dutch (“breide” for the verb). It’s “tricot” of course in French, “maglia” in
Italian, “strikke” in German, “binde” in Norwegian. Is it odd, or not, that
none of those words appears to be related to any other?

I have spent so long struggling with Veemstra and my
computer that I had better leave it there. I will try to get up the hill to
hear Kaffe this evening, if I am spared. I will try to write a proper post tomorrow.

Monday, November 26, 2012

I had
thought there was nothing to say about knitting this morning, but James just
sent this pic of the jabot in action again at the Beijing St Andrew’s Ball.

The
grizzled facial hair was a surprise.

And Helen
C.K.S. writes that she’ll be at Kaffe’s do this coming Thursday. I think
that’s probably the day we’ll come back from Strathardle and I think I’ll be
too tired. I’m sorrier to miss seeing
her than Kaffe himself.

Not much
progress with the scarf yesterday – the dread Sunday Syndrome. I grasped, this
morning, that if I want to put in a safety pin and thereafter measure only from
it, I’ve got to put it in at the business end of the scarf, where the knitting
is going on. I am appalled that that obvious fact escaped me for 48 hours.

So we’re
all set for Strathardle. The Good Lord refrained from intervention. Back here
Friday, I hope.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Hoarding/cleaning
– Hat, Judith, Shandy: this relates to all three of yesterday’s comments.

I cleaned
another tranche of the sitting room. No discoveries, same glow of virtue.

My husband
always carries a slim engagement diary, and tucks it away in a drawer when the
new year and new diary supplant the last one. Recently, I replaced a
drawer-ful of them in the dining-room sideboard, now back from the furniture
restorer with a beautiful smooth top. I found myself with 1957 in my hands, and
looked up the day we met – February 23. Sure enough: it says “party”.

I went on
to the day of Rachel’s advent into the world, the following year. That day says “RMM” in
big letters. I didn’t look up anything in between, or beyond.

This is
relevant to your comment, Judith, because he has mislaid the current one.
Perhaps left behind in Strathardle? It must be somewhere.

I liked
your phrase about the dining room being thoroughly “bottomed”, Shandy. The
problem there – not yet anywhere near solution – is a number of tin boxes
containing older Miles family documents. They were in the cellar in Birmingham. When we moved here, we managed to
store them on a top shelf in the capacious cupboard off the hall.

One day
years ago – I wasn’t even present – my husband said something to his sister
about a torn-up letter that might or might not have been in one of those boxes.
She wanted to look for it, and try to piece it together. She kept on at me
about the subject in the months that followed. Eventually we had a son-in-law
here; he got the tin boxes down and ranged them around the dining room.

Nothing
more was ever done. My husband wasn’t willing (even he) to let his sister
rummage in those boxes unsupervised, and we never got around to doing it. She has
been dead for nearly two years. The top shelf in the cupboard off the hall has
filled up with other things. The tin boxes are very neatly stowed in the spare
room (in which one can, as a consequence, scarcely move) since the day earlier
this year when Rachel’s son Joe came up from London and cleared the dining room for us.

My husband
and I are equally resolved that they mustn’t go back into the dining room. They
can’t stay where they are. Watch this space.

Knitting

The
Reversible Cables are moving forward, although not much was done yesterday.

We’re
hoping – no, that’s not the word – to go to Strathardle tomorrow. I’ll take the
brioche scarf, as the Cables are too near completion. And this morning I
stumbled across this potentially useful
free gauge-less
hat pattern. Gauge-less because you start at the top and see how it goes. That could fill one of the awkward gaps in my Christmas list, if there's time.

I’m scared
of going tomorrow, of darkness and my husband’s frailty, and wouldn’t mind at
all if the Good Lord cared to intervene with (say) a storm or the discovery
that we’re short of Lisinopril.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Not much
was achieved yesterday on the Christmas front.

But
something domestically. In the afternoon, my husband and I put up those two
plates. Meaning, I did, under his instruction. No geometry was involved this
time, but much measuring as they had to be centred over the doors (and the door
frames are slightly curved, which makes measuring that bit more difficult) and
they had to be roughly at the same height as each other.

So that's the dining room "hang" complete".

In the
morning, I had one of those Moments. Our sitting room is rarely (if ever) cleaned
thoroughly. It’s a big room, full of stuff. I decided to start at one wall and
do a strip at a time. Yesterday’s strip was rewarding: I found last year’s
incoming Christmas cards, whose loss I had lamented the day before; and I found
a book we have been looking for, literally, for years.

It is a
shabby old copy of Ripley’s Believe it or Not, a collection of his newspaper
pieces, with those old cartoons. If you’re my age, and American, you probably
remember. I don’t know where we got it. We’ve always had it, and it has always
been at Burnside (see sidebar), in the Boys’ Room. When they were 14 and 15 or
so, James and Alexander added captions to the cartoons. Some of them are very
funny.

I think it
was Alexander who provoked the search. He and Helen and I have been through
every bookcase in that little house, again and again.

Here, in
the sitting room, stands the Glass-Fronted Bookcase, whose contents are
family-related, one way or another. And underneath it – it stands up on legs –
are piles of books worthy to be included but for which there is no room. That’s
where Ripley was. A perfectly appropriate place. I'll give it to Alexander when we next see him.

I hope
to get another yard or so of the sitting room cleaned today. What treasures
await?

Knitting

Another
landmark on the “Reversible Cables”: I’ve passed five feet – i.e., exceeded the
length of the tape measure. I put in a safety pin, so now I have only to
measure from there.

That was an
interesting comment of yours, Knitter007ca, about magazines. And thank you for
mentioning Patternfish. I don’t
think I knew about it.

I’m sure
you’re right that magazines are in decline as we increasingly get our patterns
directly from designers. Magazines have declined before – after the death of VK
in the late 60’s, there was nothing or virtually nothing on British newsstands
for some years. Even when Vogue came back to life, it was hard to find. Now,
for the moment, they abound.

I keep a
little list of FO’s in my electronic Filofax. It’s been a while since I knit
anything from a magazine – a VK scarf in ’10 was the most recent. This year, I looked up
the original article about the Strong heel (Knitter's) during my Sock Blitz, and I got out
those old Knitter’s with Meg’s EPS articles only this week. That’s it, for
magazines.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Odds and
ends

Christmas:
I got the cards out. Can’t find the package of the ones we received last year –
a nuisance. I did some virtual shopping – at IWOOT, an old friend; Liberty, useless; and
Divertimenti, some possibilities there. Shandy, I didn’t know about Persephone
Books, and will investigate today. Thanks for the tip. I think today I’ll
start actually ordering things.

Kate
Davies, my near neighbour, has a new book coming
out next week, at first available only from her website. It looks good.

While in London last weekend, I
showed Ed the madelinetosh yarn for his forthcoming Gardening Sweater and
measured a well-fitting garment of his of just the right sort. He doesn’t mind
a highish neck, so I’ll go for EZ’s Seamless Hybrid (KWT).

I used to
keep notes in my electronic Filofax (Lotus Organizer) of what patterns were in
what issues of what magazines – patterns I might want to go back to. By means
of those pages, I found that Meg’s four articles updating EZ’s Percentage System
were in the four issues of Knitter’s for 2000. And I found the issues just
where they should be, in the pile. So that’s that sorted.

I was
surprised to see how enthusiastic I was about Knitter’s, issue after issue, in
the late 90’s. I’ve been unsubscribed for a couple of years now and don’t miss
it a bit.

There is an
interesting article in the new IK (by the editor herself) about “infinite
cables” or knotwork – the sort of thing Starmore does in “The Celtic Collection”
although Starmore doesn’t seem to be mentioned in the article. The article
shows how to design your own closed-loop motifs, and it looks fun.

I’m getting
on fine with the Reversible Cables. I’m aiming for seven feet. I can’t remember
why I chose that target. Mary Lou just says, sensibly, to knit until it’s long
enough. I joined in the third skein (of four) last night. That felt like
progress.

Franklin
and his partner are currently on the high seas, returning to the US on the Queen
Mary as they have done three times before. The dates were chosen to enable them
to avoid Thanksgiving.

Another
point at which I discovered that our tastes coincide, is his dislike of
bobbles. That was mentioned when he showed us some nupps while discussing
Haapsalu in the class about lace traditions. Although slightly raised, nupps
are much less bobble-like than I thought. Maybe I’ll have a go. Shandy says it
is not entirely easy to make sure you have hold of all the nupp stitches on the
return row. And I can believe it.

Archie has
just emailed to say that school may close early for Christmas because of an
outbreak of the norovirus. It’s a nasty one. I was stricken at the New Year,
two years ago, and would prefer not be there again.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

I got to Franklin and back in
pretty good order by writing down all the things I had to do, and assigning
them to be done on specific days. Maybe I’ll now try the same approach to
Christmas. I feel I have done terrifyingly little so far. Today, get out the
left-over Christmas cards, and the list, and spread them around on the dining
room table. Order more cards as necessary.

The
Reversible Cable scarf continues well. I didn’t get as much done as I hoped on
the long train journeys, but I knit industriously as I travelled across London, north to south,
south to north, four journeys in all. I’ve passed the half-way mark and
continue very pleased with the result.

We’re
planning to attempt Strathardle next week. The weather is wild and wet, but so
far open. I’ll take the scarf along. Those long winter evenings by the fire…

I had a
brief look at my antique knitting books yesterday, and came away more impressed
than ever with Franklin’s
abilities. So often one does not even know what the finished object would be. “Gentleman’s
Comforter”, for instance. What aspect of the gentleman is to be comforted? Franklin tried to help us
past that fear by setting us to knit something in class from an old pattern,
without telling us what it was.

I think I
might begin by going back systematically through his articles in Knitty, maybe
even printing them. You can get a list of them by searching Knitty for
“Franklin Habit”. Here’s
the “neckerchief” my partner and I were assigned to deconstruct in class. The
articles are fascinating, Franklin’s
curiosity and tenacity truly wonderful. Maybe one day a book?

Which
reminds me – Arne & Carlos now have a book of
Easter knits. That’s three books within a year, by my count – I was
knitting Christmas tree ornaments from their first one just 12 months ago, and
we’ve had a book of dolls in between. Come on, boys – it’s sweaters we’re
waiting for.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Thank you for your kind comments.

The next question is, how to commemorate the day? During the
lace session in the morning, Franklin
gave us a pattern of his own to work on while he talked. I made a mess of mine,
but Shandy finished hers and includes it in
her blog entry. My first thot was to buy some madelinetosh
Prairie from the selection upstairs and knit it as a scarf.

[The class, when one stops to think about it, started with
how-to-knit-lace, covered the major European traditions – Shetland, Orenburg, and Haapsalu –
and included some interesting tips on designing, with beautifully-executed
samples of his own work. Franklin
is an accomplished and many-faceted man.]

But then, over lunch, Shandy astonished and delighted me
with the gift of a skein of Susan Heath
yarn. A new name to me. I won’t try to photograph it – follow the link. (I
think this
page, of “autumnal, sun-kissed colours”, must include mine.)

The afternoon class was about knitting from old patterns –
the sort of thing he does in his regular columns in Knitty. A book to come? We
began, unexpectedly, when some actual Victorian knitting – done by Franklin, of course – was
distributed to the class. We were set to deconstruct it. Where did it start?
How was it done? Where did it finish? (Ours looked simple, a little triangular garter stitch shawl in two colours. My partner got it – cast on the entire lower edge, add
the centre colour intarsia-wise. I was thinking about knitting strips and
picking up stitches.)

The class went on to talk about Victorian needles and yarn –
the man is a serious and meticulous historian of knitting – before we were set
to knit a mystery item from an antique set of instructions. I did better on
that than I had with the lace in the morning.

So might the beautiful skein Shandy gave me become something
from an old pattern? Something usable. A hat? I have one antique book myself,
an 1843 edition of Mrs Gaugain. But there is lots of digitized material on-line
– Franklin gave
us the major URLs. It had never really occurred to me before that I might
actually knit from such a source. But now I feel empowered.

I might also mention that I discovered, right at the
beginning of the day, that I have been doing the long-tail cast on wrong all
these years. More years than Franklin
has been alive. Well, not wrong. Nothing is wrong in knitting except splitting
a stitch. But not optimally. I make a slip knot and, thereafter, wrap the long
tail around my left thumb, stitch by stitch,
and knit it on to the needle.

Franklin
did something cat’s-cradle-like. Other people in the class seemed to regard
this as normal. I’m sure I can find it on YouTube. This is the irreplaceable
gain of an actual day with actual people, knitting. One sees and learns things.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

All went
well.

Start with
the big one: Franklin
is a brilliant teacher, as several of you had told me. Not for him (although he
might so easily have adopted it) the role he describes in his wonderful essay
for Knitty, “The
Ten Knitters You Meet in Hell”:

“The Divine
Presence:She
considers eighty dollars a bargain price for the opportunity to spend three hours
just being in the same room with her. Offering actual instruction would be
overkill. Instead, she may proffer extempore, colorful anecdotes from her
fabulous life; or perhaps an “inspirational” slide show of her immortal
designs—the patterns for which are (of course) for sale from her booth in the
marketplace.”

The lessons were meticulously planned and timed. I learned a
lot. It was a small class – seven of us, and Franklin. Interesting women, with
things to say. He was brilliant at contributing to the
conversation without being overbearing, and then getting back to the point.

I had my camera with me – I had even put in new batteries
that morning, although the camera hadn’t asked for them. It’s heavy on
batteries, and I didn’t want to take any chances. But when the moment came, at
the end of the day, it was too embarrassing, I couldn’t ask.

But then Franklin
said he wanted to have his picture taken with me – leaving everyone else to
wonder, for an instant, whether perhaps I were Jane Sowerby. I think the picture
on his great big camera is perhaps slightly better than mine, seen above, taken a few
seconds later, in which I look hysterical.

Other aspects of the weekend were equally successful. I
managed London
on my own, although it was scary. One particularly sweet moment occurred on
Sunday morning, when I emerged from the tube station at the Angel, Islington,
wondering somewhat whether I would in fact be able to find the venue.

And there, just beyond the barrier, miraculously, was Shandy.
“Are you Jean?” We had a grand time together, including our lunch at The Elk in the Woods which
would have gone on all afternoon, if I hadn’t had to get back for the afternoon
class.

Shandy did only the morning session with Franklin,
so she had time to have a serious look at
Loop later on. I missed out on that – they didn’t let us in until just
before the lesson, and were closed when it was all over. It’s a seriously
wonderful shop, that much was clear. Maybe one day I’ll get back there.
(On-line is great, but there’s nothing like an actual fondle.)

And all went well at this end. Indeed, it suddenly began to
seem easy as soon as Rachel turned up on the doorstep on Friday evening. My
husband has clearly very much enjoyed the company of his nearest and dearest
other-than-me. The dining room pictures are hanging, and look good. The food from Cook was distinctly successful.
My husband had a nap on Saturday afternoon while everyone else went off to watch
the rugby in a pub.